Read by Kim Scopes
I am the body he shoves and kicks under the bushes so deep that the dogs scratch their noses on the thorns and the police have to use torches to find my pale hand curled in a claw among the brambles.
I am the body that makes all this fuss. Yellow tape and gloves and white jumpsuits. They don’t want to disturb me in case they spoil the evidence, but they can’t see any evidence whilst I am stuck under a bush either.
I am the body they hesitate to bury. I am searched inside and out and all over. They comb through every particle of me and they are not even looking for me at all, they are looking for him. Did he leave any of himself behind?
They forget my name. They have to look at their notes before they say it in the press conference;
‘Rachel Walker, Susan Collis, Helen Pettit ... pause, check notes and continue ... Amber Park, Diane Brook-Smith, and Sinead Duggan.’
There are too many questions about him to remember my name.
I am the body but before this I was a person, and although I am dead I find I am not done with being a person yet. My name is Amber Leigh Park and I am leaving this cold metal room.
*
All my life I was a shortarse and had to elbow my way to the front of gigs to see anything except other people’s shoulders. But now I see the town like a map on a screen and I can glide to where I want to be. I know exactly where to go. I am burning hot; a fire that demands to be fed with oxygen. Fire finds its food. I remember that from the Health and Safety day at work. Fire finds its food. I am the body and I am fire and I am Amber Leigh Park, and I know what will feed me.
A tiny sandwich bar on Gisburn Road, wedged in between the chemist and a hairdressers’. A counter, and three tables and there is my man, sitting by the window, intently scrolling a phone. He looks up as I sit but he immediately jerks his head back down as if he’d just been caught looking into a stranger’s window.
I lean back, tipping the chair to a precarious balance on its rear legs. From this angle I can take in the whole picture of him. Shirt and tie, obviously dyed black hair, faint pink scratches running along his left cheek, a bead of sweat forming between his groomed eyebrows.
‘You’re not better than me, you know?’ I say, conversationally, ‘How old are you? Thirty- thirty five? Did you know that I have a mortgage, all on my own. Did you have a mortgage at twenty four? Not many people do, you know? Especially not people on their own, especially people like me who flunked their GCSEs.’ I lean forward, landing the chair with a little thud that makes him jump. ‘I left school with next to nothing, dicked around for a year, and everyone thought that I had blown all my chances. But then I got an apprenticeship doing admin and at the end of the course they gave me a job. That was kind of a big deal for me, that they kept me on, it was the first time I thought I was actually good at something. I got promoted again within six months.’
The woman behind the counter brings him a bacon and egg sandwich. The man knows he ought to thank her but with me sitting here he can’t say anything.
‘Mmm ... bacon and egg. Good choice. But here’s how to make my favourite breakfast ...’ He is looking at the door so I tap his hand with a teaspoon, he flinches and stuffs his hand under the table. ‘Listen up! Two slices of white bread, not brown, lightly toasted, smeared in butter, real butter, not spread. Three slices of bacon, topped with two hash browns. I don’t need any ketchup or sauce. The grease and butter stop it from being too dry, but it is so salty that you need a can of Coke afterwards. Full-fat, not diet. Did you get all that? I’ll tell you again so you can remember.’
I tell him again. I also tell him my routine for going out clubbing, and what I carry in my handbag and how I love horror films but I always have to watch Mean Girls afterwards or else I get nightmares. All the time I am talking, fresh drops of sweat burst out along his forehead, and he’s shaking so much that he can’t pick up his sandwich without the egg dripping everywhere. He keeps looking around for help but no one does anything or even notices him. I’m just about to tell him that yoga is really not for me when he bolts out of the door.
I don’t mind. I don’t like yoga, but running is all right. He pelts it down the street, looking ridiculous in his suit, but I keep up, no problem, and when he dives into his car, he finds me sitting in the passenger seat with my feet resting on the dashboard.
‘My best ever road trip was when we all went to Edinburgh for Josie’s eighteenth. There were four of us, Josie, Olivia, Emma and me, (that was before Olivia and Emma fell out) and we belted out the best hits of Elton John all the way there. That was a fab weekend. Here’s my advice though; don’t drink two bottles of wine before going to see a stand up; because it is dark and you have to concentrate.’
‘Go away! Just go away!’ he whispers, gripping the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. I lean in real close, my lips almost brushing the lines in his cheek carved by Sinead Duggan’s fingernails.
‘I am not going anywhere. Not until you get to know me properly.’ I pull back and get comfy in my seat before continuing ‘I was born on the first of April 1990 and my Dad says that’s why I have always been a bit of a joker …’
*
He cracks after five days and turns himself in to the police. I go with him to the station and tell him about the time Josie and I left our empty cider cans on the top of a parked police car and thought we were badasses. My man only confesses to the murder of Rachel Walker, but that is enough for the police to make a case for all six of us. Sinead’s scratchy fingernails did their work well. I tell my man to plead not-guilty for the others, even my own murder. I want a trial and I am good at getting my own way. My man didn’t know that about me when he clamped his hand over my mouth and dragged me away from the street light, but he knows it very well now.
I am with him when his solicitor begs him not to take the stand. My man is terribly thin now, his hair all wispy and shockingly white and the skin around his eyes is so droopy that I think his eyeballs might topple right out of his head at any moment. I am quiet just long enough for him to say, ‘I have to take the stand’, then I pat him on the back and tell him that mum doesn’t cook Christmas dinner for us all any more. Instead we have a massive family buffet with all the best party nibbles, and it is my job to make the banoffee pie.
*
My mum and dad and whole family are there at the trial. They sit with the other families, everyone wears black or grey and the women hold hands and pass each other tissues. It is a lot of pain to gather in one room and the air is heavy. I can’t concentrate when I look at them so I keep my eyes on my man.
I don’t know why, because I talk through the entire thing, but it takes four long tedious days before they call him to the stand. He shuffles up there, head almost buried in his shoulders. He confirms his name and swears his oath. I stand next to the prosecutor, leaning on the wooden frame, looking up at him. He fixes his whole attention on my face. This is it. We are both ready.
The Prosecutor asks my man what he does for a living, but I say; ‘When is my birthday?’
‘Amber Leigh Park was born on the first of April 1990, and her Dad says that is why she was such a joker,’ recites my man. A satisfying gasp erupts all around us.
‘Amber Park?’ says the Prosecutor, ‘Your fourth victim?’
‘Tell them what my name means,’ I say.
‘Amber Leigh Park. Amber means Jewel, Leigh means Meadow and Park just means park. So her full name means Jeweled Meadow Park which made her think of a field full of poppies at sunset. She never told anyone that, she thought people might think she was fancying herself something she wasn’t.’
‘Then you did know Amber Park? I mean, Amber Leigh Park?’ asks the prosecutor.
‘I didn’t know her!’ he cries out, ‘but I do now.’
‘No one wants to hear about you,’ I scold him as the judge scolds everyone else for the noise that is bubbling up behind me, ‘Tell them about my mortgage.’
‘She got a mortgage when she was twenty-four. She was very proud of herself for that. She saved for two years and used the Government’s help-to-buy scheme and a gift from her grandma to pay the solicitor’s fees. It was for a two bedroomed house on Stanley Street.’
The defence points out that my man is not answering the questions.
‘I don’t mind at all,’ injects the prosecutor.
The judge turns to my man and tells him he would be wise to listen carefully and answer the questions he is asked.
Before the prosecutor knows what to say next, my man is telling the court how to make my favourite breakfast. He gets every detail right, even down to the full-fat Coke.
Every newspaper and every site where fingers tap to find out what’s going on is filled with the details of me. Everyone had thought (correctly) that all the women had been random victims in the wrong place at the wrong time. But now they ask: how did he know so much about Amber Park?
They study my life, search me out and write everything down. He is still there too of course, his name injected into the black and white lines that tell my story. I don’t want him there but you can’t have everything you want in life. They compare their findings with his evidence and prove his testimony true. But they cannot find any evidence that we had ever met before. And the less evidence they find the more they look, and the more they look the more they know me.
So it doesn’t really matter that his name is there too, because he is just a body disintegrating in a cold grey room, and I am Amber Leigh Park and how I like my breakfast is front page news.
(c) Cathy Browne, 2021
Cathy Browne lives under the shadow of Pendle Hill in Lancashire. She collects folklore and fairy tales and consistently attempts to befriend wild animals. She has been previously published by Bandit Fiction and is currently studying English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Central Lancashire.
Kim Scopes is an actor, puppeteer and theatre maker based in London. Recent credits include Somewhere to Belong, by Sycorax Collective, Don’t Worry Little Crab by the Little Angel Theatre, 5A by Proforca Theatre and Strange Hill High for CBBC.
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